In this article, Deepak traces the origin, development and issues that pervade PR profession and suggests the road ahead.
All business in a democratic country begins with public permission and exists by public approval. If that be true, it follows that business should be cheerfully willing to tell the public what its policies are, what it is doing, and what it hopes to do. This seems practically a duty.
In 1994, Intel learned the hard way about the power of PR when it initially ignored a professor's Usenet posting that its Pentium chip had a flaw during high-precision computing. The company had an awareness of the flaw, but decided to keep quiet. The post became a major news item within days, and Intel had to take a hit in its stock price as well as spend a big amount in recalling the chip. Had the company used PR in effectively managing the crisis in its initial stages, it could have saved much of the loss.
Public relations (commonly known as PR) is defined as communication with various sectors of the public to influence their attitudes and opinions in the interest of promoting a person, product, or idea. Today it is an integral part of the marketing mix, along with advertising, sales promotion and brand building. As a formal practice it is not even a century old, however its origin goes way back in time. Press release, the workhorse of PR, was invented in the late 1800s. Written in the form of a conventional news story, a release presents the point of view of the organization that circulates it. Newspaper editors and reporters often use facts, quotes and other information from releases to strengthen their stories or add accuracy and credibility. In the 1900s, PR evolved from individual press agents and publicists to counseling firms that offered their services as experts in the field. In the 1930s and 1940s, several organizations were founded to represent the interests of PR practitioners. By the late 1960s, PR had matured into a full-blown professional enterprise, comprising, in the US, of hundreds of PR agencies and thousands of individual practitioners. |
